


Crashed

by mantisbelle



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Aftermath, Felix Being a Dick, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 01:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13893441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantisbelle/pseuds/mantisbelle
Summary: The Lozano job is done and off the table. They got their cash and things should be good. Keyword: Should.It'd probably be easier if Felix would stop picking at sore spots and making things worse, but he has some shit he needs to say. Really.





	Crashed

**Author's Note:**

> Every time that I watch the Merc trilogy from Season 14, I find myself really interested in Felix's reactions to the phone call that he and Ruben Lozano first shared. I finally decided to do something with it. 
> 
> Big thanks to anipendragon, ncristelli, and lydiarogue for all helping me out with this fic in their own ways and fixing my terrible terrible writing. You guys are the best and I wouldn't have been able to do it without you.

There were a lot of things- hell, a lot of people in the world that Felix  _ hated _ . 

The thing was that Felix didn’t tend to put a lot of limits on who made their way onto that list. Not even people that he worked with or people that others would have called his  _ friends. _ Like hell, he hated Locus about ninety percent of the time and the other ten percent of Felix’s time was spent considering Locus more from an angle of necessity than personal feelings. He hated the way that Siris liked to smother him- he hated the guy's wife too. All for good reasons, of course. It wasn’t like Felix just handed his hate out like candy.    
  
But more than anyone, Felix  _ hated _ that Lozano prick- mostly because of the hell of a night he’d just had to endure because of him. He was really glad that Lozano was dead. He was glad that he had gotten a piece of getting rid of him at the end, and now that he was at the safehouse that him and his partners shared-    
  
Well, he was about due for a nap. Or something to eat or something. Siris had denied his request for burgers on the way there, and Locus wouldn't be caught dead eating that sort of thing. Which only made Felix want beer and burgers even more. 

The assholes.   
  
Felix flopped down onto their shared couch, already beginning to slip out of his pants so that he could clean himself up. Bullet in the left calf- courtesy of some asshole that was dead and was better off dead. If he hadn't been dead, Felix would have been inclined to go back and finish the job off himself.    
  
Locus seemed on-edge, still nervous and twitchy in his own weird way. And Siris-    
  
Siris seemed far away. Probably angry because he didn't get to go home to wifey as early as he'd expected. Not that Felix really  _ cared _ that much. He wasn’t the one that had gone off marrying military nurses or anything. He had no reason to  _ care _ .    
  
Felix looked down at the injury and rolled his eyes, already reaching for his knife so that he could at least dig out the bullet. He wasn't exactly a surgeon, but he'd patched up enough injuries on the battlefield that he wasn't quite squeamish anymore. Besides, he’d spent a part of his night shoving a bomb in a dead guy’s mouth. Removing a bullet from his leg himself was nothing after that bullshit. "That was one hell of a night." Felix commented, grabbing at a rag that Locus had decided to toss to him. It was a little bit damp, and that was nice enough. Not as nice as a beer would be, but nice. "Fuck that Lozano guy, right?"   
  
"He's dead, Felix." Locus said, walking over towards the window and tucking himself in against the wall as he looked out at the city. He was hugging himself, obviously still nervous. Probably thinking about the war like he always did, like that would make him  _ feel better. _ Felix and Locus both knew it was bullshit, and yet Locus insisted on it. "There's no more need to talk about it."    
  
"Good riddance." Felix snarled, beginning to dig into his leg. He didn't need too much finesse, he didn't think. At the very least, it would be another scar to show off later. "That asshole reminded me of my dad. Fucking prick."    
  
"Felix." Siris spoke up, his hands in the sink as he tried to scrub and scrub at them. He still looked pretty distant from them- either that or he was concussed after taking a baseball bat to the head. Not that Felix particularly cared which. If he was concussed at the very least Siris wasn’t throwing up. That was something.    
  
"What?" Felix snapped back. "Don't act like you actually care."    
  
"Tonight was a shitshow, alright?" Siris muttered, turning back around and looking down at Felix. "We shouldn't be considering this to be some big win or something."  He shook his head, and frowned. "Things got way out of hand, and I don't want for this to happen again."    
  
"So it  _ is  _ about wifey, then." Felix muttered, finding the bullet and wincing. "Do we have anything to drink here? And I don't mean Sam's shitty homeless person whiskey-"    
  
"No." Locus said, still looking off into the distance, and Felix could hear the  _ 'codenames'  _ coming from miles away. "We don't."   
  
"Of course we fucking don't." Felix growled. He got the bullet out and let himself flop back against the couch. "Do we at least have some of that biofoam shit? Stings like a bitch, but at least it works."   
  
Siris nodded. "It's in the bathroom."    
  
"Right-" Felix grumbled, "Make the guy that can't walk go and get it."

Locus rolled his eyes, that way that he always did before going off wordlessly to the bathroom. Felix let a sly smile cross his face and allowed himself to relax a little bit. He could hear the sound of Locus searching for the biofoam. At the very least it was something that he didn’t have to do himself. 

Siris shook his head, still with his hands down in the sink. He had stopped washing his hands for a moment before resuming. “You know that complaining won’t get you anywhere.”

“After the night I’ve had?” Felix caught the canister of biofoam that Locus had decided to toss to him. He gave it a good shake before uncapping it and leaning in towards his leg. “I think that I’ve earned the right to complain.”

“You aren’t the only one that had to deal with tonight.” Siris snarled back at him- more vicious than Siris had ever been. It left Felix sincerely wondering what had crawled up his ass and died. “The least that you could do is stop being frustrating so that the rest of us can get some rest.” 

Felix rolled his eyes, gritting his teeth as the biofoam filled out his injury with its thick paste-like substance. It burned, down to his bones and it made him  _ really _ want a drink, but at least he wouldn’t be bleeding. “You really think that Ortez is going to actually sleep after that shit?” He asked, gluing his eyes to his partner as the man hurried out of the living room towards the large master bedroom that held their three cots. “Because you know that’s bullshit just as well as I do, Mason.” 

“ _ Gates _ .” Siris said through gritted teeth. “Is there something that you really  _ need  _ to talk about tonight?”

“You see-” Felix set the canister down, checking in on his wound. At least it wasn’t going to bleed much more. “I was trying to, and then you  _ assholes  _ decided that you needed to keep interrupting.” 

Siris rolled his eyes but went to the bathroom to grab something before joining Felix on the couch. Wordlessly, he passed over a roll of gauze and some tape to Felix to use. It was probably the best thing that he was going to get out of Siris for the rest of the time that they spent in the safehouse, truthfully. “Then you should talk about it, then.” 

“I dunno-” Felix reached out for the roll of gauze and flipped it over until he found the butterfly clip that was holding it shut. “It’s just that those assholes were just… that Ruben guy? Sounded way too much like my dad. Like, we’re talking uncanny resemblances.” 

Siris gave him that  _ look _ that always manages to have multiple layers of it. Like an annoying, judgy onion. Felix made a mental note to look into getting better friends- preferably ones that  _ didn’t _ piss him off constantly. Ones that wouldn’t cockblock him at the bar, at the very least. “Do I want to know what that means?”

“All of that shit about his son-” Felix started, as he tilted his head back and squinted to stare up at the speckled white ceiling. He needed something in his system if he’s going to have this talk with  _ fucking Siris _ of all people. “ _ ‘Total disgrace, worst thing he ever brought into this world _ -’ Christ, sounded exactly like shit I’d heard before.”

“You think your dad would let you get killed by bounty hunters?”

“Me?” Felix laughed. Was Wu  _ actually  _ for real? “Fuck no. My parents give too many shits about me for that.” 

“Then I don’t see the connection.” Siris said, shaking his head disapprovingly. Felix rolled his eyes at the response. Of course Siris wouldn’t get it. Not really. That guy probably had the most normal and straightforward upbringing possible. It sure as hell would have explained the picket fences and getting hitched thing that Siris had dedicated the last few years of his life to. Fucking suburbia.    
  
Felix groaned, stretched out and stared down at his freshly wrapped leg. No sign of blood was a good thing.. “Yeah,” He muttered, annoyance coming through entirely too obviously in his voice. A part of him almost wished that Sam was there because like most things, Sam would probably get it, and if he didn’t he would try to play along like he did. Sam was probably someone’s fuck up disgrace of a son too. It’s part of the reason Felix liked to keep him around. “I figured as much.”    
  
The response that Siris gave him isn’t exactly what Felix had been expecting. Siris leaned forward and shook his head, letting out a beleaguered sigh. He braced himself on his own knees with his elbows and let his head rest in his open hands. "I know that nothing I do will be able to stop you from talking. So talk."    
  
"Good." Felix muttered, looking back away from his injured leg. "I just couldn't get over that fucking ransom call. How did we fuck it up that badly?" He looked over at Siris now, trying to lock eyes with his partner's. Siris wouldn’t look at him directly. "I mean, Locs just straight up  _ executed  _ that guy, and it was all because Gabriel Lozano had a girl under his desk- which is nasty, by the way. I remember when Sam couldn’t even imagine being an executioner because of a fucking alien, that was- " He paused, expression twisting into a snarl. "Fucked up. All of it. ."    
  
Felix let himself slow to a stop, feeling a little more than just uneven. It was like the entire night had just rushed back all at once to remind him that it was a complete clusterfuck. It had been meant to be an easy bounty once they got past the guards. Talk about every little fucking thing going wrong.    
  
Siris was still too quiet though, his face worried. "We shouldn't be taking tonight as a win, Isaac." He murmured as he balled his hands into fists. "There wasn't a single thing that we did tonight that should have happened. Sam shouldn't have just shot Gabriel Lozano, and we shouldn't have had his father after us. I just..." He went quiet again. "I never want to do that again."    
  
"Then don't." Felix muttered, already feeling a too-strong too-sharp spike of anger build up inside of him and threaten to explode. "You know that me, Sam- We can get by without you. Always have."    
  
"Gates-" Siris shot up onto his feet, putting some much-needed space between the two of them and staring him down. Once again, Felix was really glad that Locus wans’t in the room because if he was, this would only go poorly. "You fucked over this entire night, you realize that right?"   
  
"Me?" Felix raised his voice, pushing himself up to his own feet and gritting his teeth over the rush of pain that overtook him with it. "You want to blame me?! Locus was the one that fucked it up, because it's always him that  _ fucks everything up! _ " The words came too loudly, but Felix didn’t care. He was beyond that.     
  
Siris grit his teeth himself, and now Felix was almost grateful that the three of them had a policy to leave their weapons at the door. "Gates, if you think that-"    
  
"Stop."   
  
With one word, the entire room seemed to be put on ice.    
  
Locus stood in the door to their tiny bedroom. His hair was down and disheveled, and he looked exhausted and sad, pathetic bastard. Felix felt an immediate urge to lash out at him and take the guy apart and god if Sam wouldn’t just  _ deserve it _ .

“Oh, well look who it is.” Felix snapped at Locus, and he could almost see the way that the guy wanted to flinch back but didn’t allow himself to do so. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I just want you two to be quiet.” Locus muttered, his voice dark. “Please.” 

And god if hearing that out of Sam didn’t make Felix want to do something nasty or horrible. Fucking Sam, always there to ruin things at the first chance he got. “Why the fuck should we be quiet?” Felix snarled at Locus, who responded by leveling him with a deeply unimpressed look.    
  
“Because some of us want to rest.” Locus growled back, puffing himself up a little bit, like he needed to be any bigger.    
  
“Well, all you’re doing is interrupting. Now if you don’t mind-.” Felix said to Locus with as much venom as he could manage before whirling back on Siris. “I didn’t do shit wrong tonight, Wu!”    
  
“Oh that’s-”   
  
“It was all that fucker Lozano’s fault!” Felix all but spun in place, putting his back to the other two because he didn’t want to see their fucking faces at the moment. Not when he was already angry and had no way to calm himself down. “That asshole- could you even believe all of that shit?”   
  
Behind him, Locus and Siris- Mason and Sam, were both deathly silent. Neither of them seemed to want to interrupt all of a sudden, and Felix suspected that Sam might have even been trying to retreat back to the bedroom.    
  
"I mean, who the fuck does shit like that- who says shit like that. And the thing is, I don't believe a fucking word of it. If he really didn't give a shit about his son, then he wouldn't have come after us. It doesn’t make any sense."    
  
He heard two footsteps, one light and one metallic, heavy and distinct. Siris was probably seven feet away from him, and getting closer. Locus hadn't done so much as moved a muscle.    
  
"You think that he wouldn't have done anything?" Siris growled. "Because that wouldn't have happened."    
  
"Yeah," Felix muttered, suddenly feeling cool like he'd been shocked into silence with an ice bath. "Clearly not."

The other two were still there, neither of them had moved. Siris had stopped completely, his mouth closing and his eyes turning away from the rest of them. Felix had a thousand things running through his mind that he wanted to say, because he was pissed that Locus or Siris decided that they needed to make their voices heard. Sometimes he just wanted to be able to talk into the void. Not get shouted at.     
  
"I don't feel good about any of this." Siris whispered, his arms wrapped around himself in a pathetic facsimile for a hug. "Tonight _ all  _ of us could have gotten killed. My family was almost compromised, and it would have been a matter of time before you two got the same treatment."    
  
Felix rolled his eyes. "Nice way of forgetting that not all of us have wives and kids, Wu."    
  
"That isn't the point and you know it." Mason snapped back at him. He looked at Felix, but there was something in his dark eyes that was just... resigned and sad. "Tonight could have gone a lot worse than it did. And I don't... I don't like it."    
  
Mason looked over at Locus, looking for some sort of thing that could act as help. But Locus stood there, face stony and eyes downcast. He wasn’t going to help, and he wasn’t going to step in. Felix knew Locus, and he knew Sam just as well. Pacifism during all of the worst times- that was the way that Ortez was.   
  
"So what?" Felix replied, gesturing wildly with his arms. "Because whether we like it or not, tonight was a shitshow. We got the money, we took out two birds with one stone. Shit got out of hand, but we made it and we  _ won _ . I don't see what the problem is."    
  
"You don't see-"    
  
"Felix." Locus said, still not quite out of mission mode just yet. "This is-"    
  
"I don't want to do this anymore." Mason said, holding his head up high like he was actually the one in control. Felix rolled his eyes, because this was typical Mason, really. The guy was going to get a stick up his ass about the night, but it didn’t matter.    
  
It wasn’t the first time that Mason had threatened to walk out on the two of them.    
  
Felix knew why he wouldn’t do it either.   
  
"So leave us then." Felix shrugs, and he practically felt Locus get stiff at his side, even though the guy was standing several feet away. "I don't see what's stopping you." He crossed his arms over his chest and gave Mason a thoroughly unimpressed look. "Or was it that money is tight right now?"   
  
Just like that, Mason shut up and his frown deepenws, and Felix had one less one thing to worry about.    
  
"Don't act like you're going." Felix said, locking his eyes with Mason's. "We didn't get the money that we were supposed to. Whether you like it or not-" He laughed. "You're still in this."    
  
Mason's face said it all, there was anger in his expression and his lips were pursed unhappily. He looked at Locus again, but Locus-    
  
Well, he was holding himself the same way that he always did. Eyes downcast, closed in on himself, and quiet. Ready to shrink into a wall or disappear entirely.    
  
"I know." Mason mumbled, unhappiness radiating throughout his entire being. "I'm not staying for you, Gates."    
  
"Whatever you say, partner." Felix replied, smiling in a way that shows his teeth, though he didn’t have any fangs to show off.    
  
"I'm going to bed." Mason mumbled before dragging himself off to the bedroom. It left Felix alone with Locus now. Just like had always been the case.    
  
"Everything's fucked, Sam." He muttered. "What the hell even was tonight?"   
  
"I don't know." Sam mumbled, sad. "Don't drive him away from us. He’s the only other one-."    
  
"He's not going anywhere." Felix muttered, sure to cut Sam off. "You haven't driven him away yet."

Felix expected to get some sort of reaction from Sam, but Sam didn’t give it to him. Instead, he just closed in on himself further like he had for most of the night. His hanged his head for a moment before he finally started to speak.    
  
"He isn't going to stay." Sam mumbled, his head presumably back somewhere else where Felix didn’t want to go. The two of them had both seen too much shit and Sam-   
  
Well, if Sam was going to keep thinking that nobody's going to want him around,then Felix was going to work with it. It wasn’t his broken brain to deal with.   
  
"Yeah," Felix said, relaxing a little bit. "Probably not. What is it we always say?"   
  
"We're survivors." Sam parroted for him, the same way that he always had and in the same far-away tone. "All we need is each other."    
  
"Right." Felix said, but he didn’t know exactly how true that was. "Tonight was fucking... Crazy, Sam."    
  
As expected, Sam flinched a little bit. Whether it was over his name (And really, that is some bullshit that Felix didn’t understand. He didn’t like his own name that much either, but at least he didn’t get  _ weird _ about it) or him using the ‘C word’, Felix didn’t really know that much.    
  
"I know." Sam mumbled. "But he has a point."    
  
"We don't need him." Felix muttered. "He's going to go soon, but we don't need him. Worst comes to worst, there are still options out there for us. We’ll find them."    
  
Sam was still quiet, his eyes averted away from Felix in that way of his that managed to be almost shy. "Right."   
  
Felix took a few steps forward and clapped Sam on the shoulder. His leg still ached like an asshole, but that was wearing off at this point a little bit. He'd been through worse than just a bullet hole at that point in his life anyways.    
  
"C'mon, partner." He said, nodding over in the direction of the bedroom. "It's been a long night."    
  
Sam looked over at the door to the room, his perpetual frown deepening. Something was caught in his head and wasn’t going to go anytime soon, Felix was sure of that. He'd seen this shit from Sam too many times in the past, and it was a good thing that he was one of the ones with a good sense of how to  _ deal with it _ .    
  
"You know, Sam-" Felix muttered, matching his gaze. "You should probably speak up, or forever hold your peace. I don't particularly care, but I really don't need you getting weird on me again. I’m not in the fucking mood."   
  
Whatever Sam was planning to say died in his mouth. Instead, the guy mumbled out a frustrated 'goodnight Isaac' before turning to the bedroom and going to his own bed.    
  
For the first time since they got back from the bar, Felix was alone. Isaac was alone, and he didn’t know whether he liked it. The night was fucked, and he couldn’t really get the look of Sam- no, Locus, executing Gabriel Lozano out of the blue like that. Completely cold-blooded, like he didn't even care. Robotic even.    
  
Just like he'd been taught.    
  
He'd never realized just how fucked shit was before that. But now that he'd seen it face to face-    
  
Felix didn’t know what to feel or think. He wanted to get some rest, but that was hard with his head buzzing with thousands of thoughts and feelings he didn’t want to actually have to deal with.

In the end, he decided not to go to bed. He tugged his pants back on carefully, took a seat on the couch and pulled the loose blanket there over his shoulders. Normally he wasn’t the one doing this, but for this night, he felt like he fucking needed it.    
  
It wasn’t not like the other guys would get what was bothering him so much anyways. Sam was too fucked up and Mason was too normal. The two of them weren’t the ones on the call, they weren’t the ones that got to hear every sickening word that Lozano had said. They had gotten it muffled and ruined because of the speakerphone.    
  
Him though? He’d heard it loud and clear. Every word a little too familiar and a little too close to home. It reminded him too much of home, before he'd been all but run out of the family home because he was too much of a disgrace. If his father knew what he'd done that night-    
  
Well, Isaac was sure that it would have sounded like Ruben Lozano, angry and disappointed over the family fuck up that had done so many shitty things that there wasn't any coming back.    
  
Ruben Lozano was dead, and so was Gabriel Lozano.    
  
That should have felt like some sort of comfort to him, but Isaac didn't feel it.    
  
In the end, he didn't sleep that night, and come morning when Sam got up too early because the guy was still living on military time for some fucking reason, Isaac blamed it on the leg.    
  
It couldn't have been further from the truth. He was sure that Mason saw through it, but had too much dignity to say so much as a fucking word.    
  
Isaac felt it then, how things were about to fall apart at the seams. He had to do what he could to hold the little pieces together, whatever it took.    
  
An angry bitter part of him vowed to make everyone around him eat their words. He was going to hold this shit together at the seams, and when shit got bad, he was going to be better than anyone else at doing what he did. He was going to make Ruben Lozano, his father, Mason- all of them were going to eat their fucking words.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all comments and criticism are greatly appreciated.
> 
> [I'm on tumblr. Sometimes stuff happens. I'm always willing to take new prompts and questions there!](http://tyrian-callows.tumblr.com/)


End file.
